What's New in Microsoft Office 2013

Learn about the exciting new features of Microsoft Office 2013, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Outlook, OneNote, and Publisher. This course provides step-by-step, easy-to-follow instructions to help you get the most out of Microsoft Office.

Details

In this course, you'll learn how to use the exciting new features of Microsoft Office 2013 using step-by-step, easy-to-follow instructions. Before you know it, you'll be using each Office program with ease, and working more efficiently with cloud computing!

You'll explore Word, where you'll get experience using the new Start screen, templates, and Ribbon commands. In Excel, you'll learn to speed up your work using the Quick Analysis tool, Flash Fill, and some great new chart features. In PowerPoint, you'll discover new ways to make presentations look better than ever, including themes, graphics, shapes, colors, and animation. In Access, you'll get acquainted with databases you can put online and share with others. You will also discover the new features of the email program Outlook. In addition, you'll explore the often-overlooked note-taking program OneNote, as well as the easy-to-use page layout program Publisher. Finally, you will discover how to build your integration skills and use some of the Office programs together.

Enrollment Options:

Syllabus

Microsoft Office 2013 adds new capabilities and a new look to the features of Office 2010. In addition, Office 2013 lets you store and work on your documents "in the cloud," making it easier to work from different locations and to share your work with others. In this lesson, you'll take a peek at the new look of Office 2013 and then learn about working with Office programs and documents in the cloud.

Microsoft Word offers several new startup features, including a Start screen and templates. Its enhanced cloud connectivity appears when you open and save files. A new view and improved graphics capabilities make it easier to view and work with pictures and videos. In this lesson, you'll use these features in both a short and a long document

Word 2013 makes working with tables easier than ever, with new border choices and a new easy way to add rows and columns. When you finish formatting, you'll most likely want to share your documents with others, often to get their responses to your work. In this lesson, you'll learn about new Word reviewing features that make this faster. You'll explore Office apps, which will help you extend what you can do in the program. You'll also learn that Word 2013 features the ability to open PDF documents so that you can edit them right inside of Word. Finally, you'll look at file compatibility.

Like Microsoft Word 2013, Microsoft Excel 2013 has added some important new features that can help speed up your work. You'll see that the Excel screen elements are similar to those you saw earlier in Word. You'll also go over new data analysis tools that let you preview various data relationships before you choose one. Combine these with new chart formatting tools and the ability to create slicers from tables, and you'll find better ways of communicating your data more clearly than ever before.

In this lesson, you'll begin by exploring changes to Excel PivotTables and PivotCharts, after a quick review. You'll also learn a great new PivotTable feature called the Timeline. You'll then move on to workbook sharing and then experience some of the new apps for Excel. Finally, you'll look at sharing workbooks and the new procedure for creating and saving you own templates.

In this lesson, you'll look at the PowerPoint Start screen templates and then open a presentation. You'll learn about themes and theme variants, discover new slide formats, and examine how the Ribbon tabs have changed. Afterwards, you'll explore several new tools that let you add and work with graphics in less time.

In this lesson, you'll gain experience in formatting slide backgrounds, formatting pictures, and presenting in Slide Show view. The lesson will then introduce you to the new Presenter view, which lets you practice and present your show using new tools. You'll then turn to the new comment features, which allow you to more easily exchange information with people who review your presentation. Finally, you'll look at new animation features that let you create custom animations more easily.

Access 2013 has one big new feature: It lets you create web apps, which are online databases that other people can open and work with using a web browser. In this lesson, you'll do a quick review of Access and then create two web apps. You'll need Access 2013 and a SharePoint server address, which you can get by signing up for a free trial of an Office 365 subscription.

In this lesson, you'll look at the most important new features in Outlook 2013, including improvements to the email, contacts (now called people), calendar, and tasks areas. Some areas have been renamed and others have received a new look to help you communicate more efficiently. You'll also look at ways of customizing the screens in the major Outlook areas so that you can always have the information you need at your fingertips.

This lesson will introduce you to the basics of OneNote 2013, including creating a notebook, tabs, and pages. You'll then see the major new features, including creating and tagging text, creating tables with shading, converting tables to Excel spreadsheets, and inserting existing Excel spreadsheets. Finally, you'll learn about sending information to OneNote from other programs and exporting notebooks.

In this lesson, you'll look at the new features of Microsoft Publisher 2013, including new templates and new text and graphics formatting options. The lesson will cover fills, outlines, and special effects such as shadows, reflections, glows, and bevels. These effects offer countless combinations that let you make your text and graphics truly distinctive. You'll learn to easily swap images in a publication and make any image into a page background. Finally, you'll learn how to save any publication as a graphic file that you can send to any photo printer.

In this lesson, you'll learn how to perform basic integration techniques, which let you reuse information between the Office programs. You'll compare and contrast pasting, embedding, and linking and get some hands-on experience as you integrate spreadsheet cells and a chart into a Word report. Finally, you'll learn to create an entire PowerPoint presentation in an instant from a Word outline.

Requirements

Requirements:

Hardware Requirements:

This course must be taken on a PC. It is not suitable for Mac users.

Software Requirements:

Windows 7 or later.

Browser: The latest version of Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox are preferred. Microsoft Edge is also compatible.

Software must be installed and fully operational before the course begins.

Other:

Email capabilities and access to a personal email account.

Notes:

If you are using Office Home and Student or Office Home and Business, you can read the chapters about Outlook, Access, and Publisher, without keystroking them. It's not a good idea to have two versions of Office on the same machine, so if you do download it, try it on a second machine.

Prerequisites:

There are no prerequisites to take this course. However, prior experience with at least two Microsoft Office programs is recommended.

Instructional Material Requirements:

The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.

Instructor

Barbara Clemens has been a software product manager, editor, writer, and teacher since 1984. She holds a B.A. in English, a M.A. in English as a Second Language, and a M.B.A. She has worked with educational publishers Addison-Wesley and Course Technology to create software textbooks for colleges and universities. She has edited, revised, and written many Microsoft Office texts and has co-authored two textbooks on new versions of Office: "Upgrading to Microsoft Office 2007 and "Upgrading to Microsoft Office 2010."

Reviews

This was a very good course and it was very informative. It makes me want to learn more about Microsoft Office 2013.

This was my very first online class and it was a truly awesome experience. I was so scared of what I was getting into, but it turned out to be a wonderful experience for me and the instructor is perfect...I am really excited to see what I can do next.

Thank you for offering this course. It helped me get up to speed coming from 2003 and I could not find any other local schools that offered something like this course. I was already proficient in all the programs and just needed to capture what was different...Thank you!

I liked this course very much and found the information that was covered very interesting and useful. The instructor was very good at answering all my questions and I appreciated the time she took to prepare the lessons and respond to the discussion area questions.

I had almost zero knowledge of Power Point, Excel, Publisher, One Note and Web Apps...Most of information was all new to me, which meant I had to study more. The instructor did a fantastic job explaining (which to me) was complicated information. Thank you.

It was a pleasure attending this course. I learned more than I expected to and am glad I chose to take it. The instructor, Barbara Clemens, was fantastic. She was very helpful and responded to all questions with answers and specific instructions as to how to get through each process. She seemed to have a great knowledge of the Microsoft products.

I found this course challenging because I was not very familiar with Office. It was also very enjoyable. I was glad to learn about the power and adaptability of Office. The instructor's enthusiasm and knowledge was evident. It gave me a good start to learn more! Thank you for this opportunity.

I found this course challenging because I was not very familiar with Office. It was also very enjoyable. I was glad to learn about the power and adaptability of Office. The instructor's enthusiasm and knowledge was evident. It gave me a good start to learn more! Thank you, for this opportunity.

I have Microsoft Certification as an Office 2007 Master. I recently purchased a new computer and upgraded to Windows 10 and Microsoft Office Suite 2013. My goal in this course was to learn the features that have changed from Office Suite 2007. The course helped me to achieve my objective.

This is a very interesting course which gives a broad overview of Microsoft Office 2013/2016. It has inspired me to learn more about the programs/applications which I do not normally use, specifically Access, PowerPoint, OneNote and Publisher. Integrating Office information can be useful in my present job and I will certainly encourage others to take this course, even if it's just for interest. On a whole, the instructor has been very helpful and informative. She has dealt with my/our problems quickly and with detailed, step-by-step instructions.